Voronwë the Faithful wrote: ↑Tue Jun 21, 2022 6:04 pm
Separation of church and state? What separation?
Congresswoman Lauren Boebert (Republican of Colorado) approves. Today she said:
"The church is supposed to direct the government. The government is not supposed to direct the church. That is not how our founding fathers intended it. And I'm tired of this 'separation of church and state' junk that's not in the Constitution. It was in a stinkin' letter, and it means nothing like what they say it does."
Lord, will someone PLEASE give that woman a clue!! Don't they teach kids about the constitution anymore??
When the night has been too lonely, and the road has been too long,
And you think that love is only for the lucky and the strong,
Just remember in the winter far beneath the bitter snows,
Lies the seed, that with the sun's love, in the spring becomes The Rose.
Texas's Attorney General, Ken Paxton, today called for the Supreme Court to overturn Lawrence v. Texas, the 1993 decision that struck down laws banning gay sex.
Clarence Thomas had urged the Court to reconsider that decision in his concurrence last week striking down Roe.
The really striking thing to me is that, while Paxton's basic point is that he thinks LGBT rights should be decided by the states rather than the federal courts, it was given in response to the question of whether he, as Attorney General, would defend a Texas law that attempted to outlaw "sodomy." Obviously, this is the usual subtext to this sort of states' rights argument—that it's important the issue be decided by the states because they want a different outcome than previous Courts have given—but there's generally more beating around the bush than in this case. It makes sense they feel emboldened, though.
Don't sodomy laws apply to everyone? Are the straight men advocating for this just assuming no one will mind if they get adventuresome with a consenting straight woman?
River wrote: ↑Tue Jun 28, 2022 9:08 pmDon't sodomy laws apply to everyone? Are the straight men advocating for this just assuming no one will mind if they get adventuresome with a consenting straight woman?
Traditionally, they used very broad definitions, though they weren't always enforced uniformly. Some states changed their definitions over time. The law in question in Lawrence v. Texas applied only to "homosexual conduct," which was the official term in Texas for the crime of sodomy after a revision to the criminal code in 1973. That same revision legalized heterosexual anal and oral sex.
River wrote: ↑Tue Jun 28, 2022 9:08 pm
Don't sodomy laws apply to everyone? Are the straight men advocating for this just assuming no one will mind if they get adventuresome with a consenting straight woman?
I think it's a given that those advocating for this assume that the laws won't touch them.
Privilege just means ‘private law.’ That’s exactly what it means. He just doesn’t believe the ordinary laws apply to him. He really believes they can’t touch him, and that if they do he can just shout until they go away.
Terry Pratchett, The Truth
If there was anything that depressed him more than his own cynicism, it was that quite often it still wasn't as cynical as real life.
A couple of big cases went down today, one good, one very bad, but the real big news is that Ketanji Brown Jackson was sworn in as the first female African-American justice on the Supreme Court of the United States.
"Spirits in the shape of hawks and eagles flew ever to and from his halls; and their eyes could see to the depths of the seas, and pierce the hidden caverns beneath the world."
Yes. How much remains to be seen, but yes. She will likely be on the court for decades. It will make a difference, even it doesn't seem like it right away.
"Spirits in the shape of hawks and eagles flew ever to and from his halls; and their eyes could see to the depths of the seas, and pierce the hidden caverns beneath the world."
River wrote: ↑Tue Jun 28, 2022 2:47 am
Boebert dropped out of HS and needed multiple tries to attain her GED. She is not what you'd call academically inclined.
No surprise there!
When the night has been too lonely, and the road has been too long,
And you think that love is only for the lucky and the strong,
Just remember in the winter far beneath the bitter snows,
Lies the seed, that with the sun's love, in the spring becomes The Rose.
River wrote: ↑Thu Jun 30, 2022 5:57 pm
In the short term, no.
What other term do we have?
I don't really understand your question. The fact that there are immediate ramifications to things that happen does not mean that what happens over the course of a longer period of time does not also matter. Justice Jackson will have influence over the court for a long time, both in her rulings and in the impact that her presence will have on the other justices (yes, even the most conservative ones). Her achievement is already looked at as shining example by young women of color in this country. The country is and will be better because she is on the court. That doesn't mean that bad things have not and will not happen. Both can be true.
"Spirits in the shape of hawks and eagles flew ever to and from his halls; and their eyes could see to the depths of the seas, and pierce the hidden caverns beneath the world."
Dec. 30, 2021. The fire started at 11 am. We'd had almost no precipitation since July and it was a very windy day. 1000 homes were lost, but somehow only two people died. I took this picture while sitting in the evac line out of my neighborhood.
The dumbest thing I've ever bought
was a 2020 planner.
"Does anyone ever think about Denethor, the guy driven to madness by staying up late into the night alone in the dark staring at a flickering device he believed revealed unvarnished truth about the outside word, but which in fact showed mostly manipulated media created by a hostile power committed to portraying nothing but bad news framed in the worst possible way in order to sap hope, courage, and the will to go on? Seems like he's someone we should think about." - Dave_LF
The one-sentence official synopsis of Justice Kagan's dissent is all you need:
"Today the Court strips the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) of the power Congress gave it to respond to 'the most pressing environmental challenge of our time.'"
"To be clear, the court today holds that Indian country within a state's territory is part of a state, not separate from a state," Kavanaugh wrote in a decision that scholars of Native American law said was a major departure from longstanding precedent.
I am not even close to being a subject matter expert here, but this seems ... deeply concerning for the future of tribal sovereignty.
No surprise there!
